Comment 8 for bug 432897

There's a further dimension to this bug, which #116 does not address.

The jamu cron script is included in the mythvideo package, which is used by both frontends and backends. It is entirely feasible to install it on a frontend-only machine, or even on a desktop PC which is not a dedicated frontend

On a desktop PC, it is feasible that you won't run MythTV as a dedicated user, i.e. your normal user (e.g. "directhex") will be running the frontend, not the automatic "mythtv" user (who has, in my case, never been used and has an empty home directory).

There are two questions at this point:

1) Should jamu be executed in my scenario? The Mythtv Wiki suggests it should only be executed on backends. Rather than checking the file exists, it might be better to simply export MYTHCONFDIR in the cron entry, as that directory is treated in jamu as an alternative home for config.xml
2) If not, then what happens if I ever used the mythtv user, even if just to try out? Whether or not jamu is executed depends on whether you've ever run a backend for any reason (debian/mythtv-backend.init line 60), or ever run a frontend as the mythtv user for any reason libs/libmyth/mythcontext.cpp line 1048).